I Believe
by TutorGirlml
Summary: One-shot Song fic Alone in the crime lab late at night Hawkes' past comes back to haunt him in an unusual way


Hey all

Hey all! I'm posting this with a little trepidation, because I feel like I maybe don't know enough about Sheldon Hawkes to do the character justice. But I've taken a crack at it anyway, and tried to give him a little bit more backstory. I heard the song one day and for some reason it planted this story idea for Hawkes, so I ran with it. Anyway, I'd love to hear what you think, as always. And of course I don't own the show, the character, or the Diamond Rio song I use here (though it's a beautiful song and you should check it out if you've never heard it!)

I Believe

By: TutorGirlml

The late night had faded into early morning and the New York City Crime Lab was mostly deserted at this hour. The halls and offices were a dark, modern interior sea, here and there punctuated by islands of light at certain lab stations and offices. A few insomniac lab techs were still working; either to avoid going home and not being able to sleep, or to finish running a match on some DNA or searching for fingerprints that the CSI working the case would be wanting from them come morning.

Strange as it might have seemed, this was Dr. Sheldon Hawkes' favorite time to be in the lab. He loved the quiet and relative peace – at least compared to the regular workday's noise and bustle. The scattered bits of light and reduction of the normal swarm of people to a few familiar faces was a comfort, soothing even.

Looking up from the microscope he'd been bent over studiously, he pulled his dark framed glasses off the top of his head where he'd shoved them and returned them to his face as he glanced around. He loved the people he worked with, people he could honestly and without exaggeration consider part of his family, but Sheldon Hawkes enjoyed his time alone as well. He had always been thoughtful, internalizing more than speaking or joining in. Even as a child, he'd been serious and quiet to the point that his mother had cautioned him to be young and to have fun while he could – there would be plenty of time to be grown up. It was only here in the crime lab as a CSI that he had found for the first time in his life that balance between his cerebral side and being part of a group and a team. He loved it, but still, moments like this, when it almost seemed he had the place to himself, were a nice breather – an escape into the comfort of reflection and learning. When he didn't have to think of what to say or do, but simply went about the work that came naturally to him.

Tonight was different though. Something had been plaguing him. It was the vague sense that he wasn't alone; that someone else was in the room with him, even though he knew it wasn't possible. He could sense some sort of presence hovering, looking over his shoulder, like a sudden ice-cold chill on a warm day. Scientifically, which was how he'd always proudly known his mind to work, he knew the very idea seemed ridiculous, but there it was all the same. _'Get ahold of yourself, Sheldon,' _he scolded himself firmly and attempted to shake the thought out of his head.

Then, suddenly, a glass beaker fell to the floor and shattered. There was no one near it; he was on the other side of the room and the only one there. He couldn't blame it on the wind, or on someone else walking by and hitting it. There was only one thing it could be.

With a sigh, Sheldon shook his head as he bent to clean up the mess and throw the glass shards away. He had thought for some time now that she was gone. She hadn't troubled him for so long that he had finally decided she'd found some peace. Obviously, he had been wrong.

He peered around the empty room, squinting as if he could look close enough to see something that was invisible; something he could only feel. If only she could materialize before him and he could see that it was really her. If he could just see her again. _'Well, Serena,' _he spoke quietly into the air, _'what do you want from me?'_

_Every now and then,_

_soft as breath upon my skin,_

_I feel you come back again_

_and it's like you haven't been_

_gone a moment from my side_

_like the tears were never cried_

_like the Hands of Time were_

_pulling you and me_

_And with all my heart I'm sure_

_we're closer than we ever were_

_I don't have to hear or see,_

_I've got all the proof I need…_

It was easy for him to remember her. She tried to creep back into his mind constantly – every waking hour of every day. She had become so much a part of him when he'd had her, so huge and vital a piece of his life, that what he'd been doing since he'd lost her had felt incredibly unnatural. Trying to force her from his heart and head had been the only thing he'd known to do to keep himself sane. She was gone and he'd had to accept that, however hard it had been to believe. But it seemed as though know she wasn't going to let him do it anymore.

He knew already that recalling her to mind was simple, but actually letting her linger in his thoughts was painful – an actual, physical ache. The memory of what he'd had with Serena was like a wound that had never properly healed, and he didn't know if he could bring himself to probe the injury.

_'Can't you understand?' _he spat out fiercely, his voice a harsh whisper in the apparent emptiness of the room. _'I don't want to remember how good it was! You're not here!'_

The moment he denied her, however, visions from memory came spilling back into his head…

_It was a balmy, summer night, the air wafting over their skin lightly as they sat together on the seat out on her apartment's balcony. She'd loved that loft she'd found in Greenwich Village, the perfect spot for an aspiring artist she'd told him, beaming happily. His arm was wrapped around her as she sat half in his lap, his thumb unconsciously stroking over the smooth, mocha skin of her bare arm as he tried to finish studying for one of the last tests he would take before completing med school. _

_She was working on a sketch of her next sculpture, he thought now that it had been a pair of leopards intertwined as they basked in the sun. But she had kept glancing up, a playful smirk tugging at the edges of her full, shapely lips, trying to catch his eye and distract him._

'_Come on, Sheldon,' she'd cajoled, her voice both playful and sensuous, rather husky for a woman, but honey-sweet and tempting, and all the more seductive for its striking uniqueness. 'Enough studying. Time for some fun.' And she'd leaned forward, slipping her soft, elegant hand inside the collar of his shirt to run along his chest as she pressed a kiss to his brow. Neither his studies nor his resistance had held out long after that… _

He realized now that she had usually been right. Serena had always known when he needed to be pulled from his books and his routine. She'd had a way of getting him out of himself into the land of the living and the here and now that he had not even realized he needed so badly until she came along. No one else before or since had ever been able to do that for him so well.

There are more than angels

_watching over me_

_I believe,_

_Oh, I believe_

The flashback ended as abruptly as it had begun, seeming as though it roughly tossed him back into reality, leaving Sheldon slumped against the lab table, hands clenched, breathing hard, a tear trying to escape the corner of his eye that he could not allow to fall. If he ever let his cool exterior, his mirror surface, crack…he might not be able to put it back together.

He hadn't allowed himself to think about those perfect days with her for so long; that time when he had almost had it all. And he was amazed at the pain and longing it could still inflict. Blinking rapidly, he stood tall again, pushing away from the table and trying to focus again on the job he had been doing.

But her presence wouldn't leave him alone. Though he tried to ignore it, he could tell that Serena was there, needing something from him, breathing softly on his neck, whispering in his ear, causing him chills he couldn't explain in any other way.

_'What is it, Sera? What?' _his brow furrowed as he mumbled to himself, trying to concentrate, to understand. _'I don't know how you're doing this. I don't know what you want from me now…it's too late…'_

Bowing his head, Sheldon waited, eyes closed, shutting out his doubts and his surroundings, wondering if any answers would come to him. All his got instead was another vivid memory – this one as wrenching as the previous one had been pleasant…

_'We've got a twenty-seven year old female, gunshot wound to the chest, internal bleeding, lung collapsed, lost her once on the way in, intubated, get her into the OR, stat!'_

_As if it were that day again instead of another lifetime ago, he could hear the barked words of the EMT notifying the surgeon as the gurney carrying Serena rolled into the ER. He'd been trotting along beside, clinging to her hand, holding onto her desperately wishing he could wake from the living nightmare they'd been plunged into._

_She had been hit by a stray bullet as they were out taking a walk after dinner one evening. The bodega down the street from her apartment was being held up. Shots were fired as the thief fled, and Serena had been caught in the crossfire._

_He'd felt her slump into his side as she fell and he'd lowered her to the ground, quickly grasping what had happened and trying to keep her conscious as he called 911 and struggled to staunch the bleeding. He'd known it was bad, but held onto the belief that she'd pull through as he'd kept pressure on the wound. Denial not allowing him to think that it was in her chest, that the shirt he'd pulled off and pressed to her body was already soaked through with red, only that he was almost a doctor. He had to been able to keep her hanging on, or what good was any of what he'd learned? _

_As he'd knelt there in the middle of the street, he'd known with certainty that she was an irreplaceable part of his life, more so than he'd even thought. There was nothing else he could have done, but it didn't assuage the guilt, didn't dull the ache of knowing that he couldn't save her. That he could do nothing else to keep her alive but hold onto her and pray that help came before she completely bled out there in his arms._

_It had haunted him every night and day since, through four long years, until this very moment. He could still see himself standing alone and bereft in that hospital corridor where they'd taken her from him and disappeared, trembling with rage at what had happened and going into shock as he stared at his shaking hands held before him, coated with her blood. The surgeon had come back to tell him that she was gone. And he'd known then – even though he'd gone through the rest of the medical program and become a licensed physician – that he would never be able to accept it. He'd not been a resident at a hospital long before he lost someone else to death before their time, and he'd known it wasn't something he could do. He couldn't fail and watch people who weren't supposed to go yet die. Serena had been almost enough to kill him, and though he'd been an extraordinarily good doctor, he couldn't watch tragedies like hers happen again and again and be so knowledgeable, so skilled and yet unable to save them all…_

Once again, his deep, hypnotically dark, questing eyes opened and he glanced around himself, disoriented as he came out of the daze he'd sunken into.

_'Is that it?' _he whispered to himself, feeling his tattered insides that he'd barely managed to hold together with determination and time and distance rending apart again. _'It was my fault? Could I have saved you? Do you blame me?'_

_Now when you die_

_your life goes on_

_it doesn't end here when you're gone_

_Every soul is filled with light, _

_It never ends, if I'm right_

_Our love can even reach_

_across eternity_

_I believe, oh, I believe_

_Forever you're a part of me,_

_forever in the heart of me_

_I will hold you even longer if I can_

_Oh the people who don't see the most,_

_see that I believe in ghosts_

_and if that makes me crazy, then I am_

_I believe, oh, I believe_

He had to get out of there, out of the lab, Sheldon realized, glancing around him, hoping no one had seen him slowly slipping off the deep end, processing evidence and talking to a ghost. Taking care not to compromise anything, but still working as swiftly as he could, he carefully put the evidence away, switched his lab coat for his jacket, and pushed out the door and headed for the elevator.

The sense of her presence followed him as he had known it would. Where always before he had wondered suspiciously if she really was there, now he was sure of it and the way he had denied her for so long, and the memory of how he had failed her, gnawed away at his heart. Stepping out onto the city's dark streets, he struck out at a brisk walk, knowing exactly where he needed to go and realizing he should have been there long before now.

There was a chill wind blowing that made him hunch into his jacket and bow his head as he walked so rain wasn't whipped into his face. Sticking his hands into his pockets, he merely picked up his pace and walked through the dark streets that were lightened oddly by the wash of lit billboards and headlights and nightlife of the city that never sleeps.

Within fifteen minutes, Sheldon had reached his destination and was walking through the wrought iron curlicued gates of a cemetery he hadn't entered since the day of Serena's funeral, what felt like ages ago. Time and space had not confused his steps though; his feet knew right where they were going as if he'd traveled the path every day.

At the end of a row, beneath a weeping willow dripping rainy tears, was the small black stone marker with the two stone doves resting atop it. He had chosen the spot. Her parents had been too distraught to make many decisions about the details. It had seemed like a peaceful spot to him, beautiful even, if not for where and what it was.

Stopping at her grave, he ran his hand over the cool stone and closed his eyes, feeling some modicum of the torment inside him ease. _'Sera,' _he spoke quietly, _'what can I do? I have to be able to think that you're at peace.'_

He knelt, studying the cool surface of the marker, thinking and wishing she could give him an answer. Despite his mind's scientific questioning and doubts, he wanted to believe Serena was safely in a better place. If he had nothing else to cling to, he still held onto the faith that there was a God who would not allow her to be anything other than happy and free of the pain she'd been in when she left this world. Someday she would be waiting for him when his time came, and Sheldon felt it was easily the best thing he had to look forward to. Possibly his view of Heaven and God made no more rational sense than the feeling that her spirit was here with him now, but he accepted the comfort that faith offered him as a sort of proof in itself.

Maybe, he reasoned, leaning forward to rest his forehead against the cold, wet surface for a moment before pressing his fingers to the chiseled letters of her name, she wasn't here because she was restless or unhappy, afraid or in pain, blaming him or wanting something from him. Could it be possible that she was hovering over him even though she was at peace because he wasn't? Her lingering might be her way of telling him to let go, she was fine and if he let himself, he would be as well. She had loved him and wanted him to carry on; to do what he had been meant to do with his life until they could meet again.

Though the downpour around him had not grown violent enough for lightning, Sheldon felt as though a flash of it had struck him with the blinding realization. It shook him to the core as he saw that he had indeed been haunted all this time – not by her, but by his own grief and guilt and fear of opening himself up completely to the possibility of such loss again.

And it was time to stop. Standing up again, Sheldon Hawkes turned to leave Serena's resting place with a fond final glance. _'I see now,' _he whispered to her. A crooked smile graced his caring, intelligent face, and his eyes warmed as he jokingly added, _'You've made your point. It stops tonight.'_

He was going to let himself live again, truly, and stop punishing himself for something he couldn't have changed. He would open up and let the people who cared about him in. He had the rest of his life to live, and just as she always had, Serena was telling him to go and live it fully.

As he left the cemetery, Sheldon felt the relief and lightness creeping into his being. He'd laid down a heavy burden. Now the only mantle still on his shoulders was the one he had chosen; one he wanted. He'd spend the rest of his life searching for answers and fighting for justice, for those like Serena who'd had their lives cut short and couldn't speak for themselves.

He realized that it no longer bothered him if she lingered with him from time to time, or even if she no longer did. From now on, he would allow himself his memories, as comfort instead of punishment. _'I love you,' _he said into the nighttime storm as he turned once at the gate, and then he finally left his past behind him.

The path he walked was never going to be easy. But he wanted to do what he could to make things right for others who suffered like he had. Other people who needed answers; needed to know what had happened to their loved ones and why. He could give that to them, and maybe find some peace for himself along the way.

There are more than angels watching over me

_I believe, oh I believe…_


End file.
